1884.] LETTERS TO THE EDITOR. 141 



I may also here ask if any one ever saw a beech tree struck by 

 lightning. I have seen almost every other kind of tree struck, but 

 never a beech. 



J. G. Craig. 



Bradford Estate Offices, 

 Westox-under-Lizaed, near Suifnal, 

 November 10th, 1884. 



[Our correspondent opens up two curious questions, worthy of 

 accurate observation. The first about lightning running upward, 

 involves another. Where does atmospheric electricity come from ? 

 It does not appear that living plants exhibit an electric state analo- 

 gous to that which has been shown in the nerves and muscles of 

 animals. All the signs of electricity observed in them appear due 

 to ordinary chemical reactions, and in some cases perhaps to tlie 

 electricity of tlie atmosphere. If that comes from the evaporation 

 of water at the surface of the earth from chemical reactions whether 

 in sea-water or in the solid crust of the earth, then observers should 

 not take it for granted that lightning cannot run upwards. 



At the first meeting of the Loudon Eoyal Meteorological Society, 

 Colonel the Hon. Arthur Parnell read a paper on " The JMechanical 

 Characteristics of Lightning Strokes." The main objects of this 

 paper were — first, to attempt to show that lightning is not a sorb of 

 electric fluid that descends from the clouds, injures buildings and 

 persons in its course, and dissipates itself in the earth, but that it is 

 a luminous manifestation of the explosion caused by two equal 

 forces springing towards each other simultaneously from the earth 

 and the under surface of the inducing cloud, and coalescing or 

 flying out nearly midway between the two plates of the electrical 

 condenser formed by the earth and the cloud ; secondly, to demon- 

 strate that of these two forces it is the earth-spring or upward force 

 alone that injures buildings, persons, or other objects on the earth's 

 surface, and that constitutes tangibly what is rightly known as a 

 lightning stroke. The author gave the details of 278 instances, the 

 records of which were intended to demonstrate with more or less 

 precision the existence of an upward direction in the force of the 

 stroke. 



The late James ]Macnab saj'S (Trans. Hot. (S''jf. i.\l., vol. xii. 

 p. 182) : " On' hearing that some beech plants were injured in the 

 grounds of Messrs. Methven & Sons, at Inverleith I'ark, on June 

 25 [1874], I made an inspection of them, and found a row, 39 

 yards long, with plants averaging from 2 to 3 feet in height, wliich 

 had stood in tlieir present position for four years. The leaves of 

 nearly all appeared burnt, but the plants .did not seem to have 



